To : Struan
>From : Roger
ROGER:
Struan, before we get into whether we AGREE with radical empiricism, it may
help if we have a common UNDERSTANDING of radical empiricism. I thought I
laid it out pretty good in my last post, along with a complete rejection of
the IDEALISM charge. But perhaps I am wrong. If you could answer my prior
rebuttals I would be very, very greatful. I promise to try to keep an open
mind and a positive dialogue going, and hope you would concur. ( I treasure
growth and only grow by seeing the inadequacies of my assumptions)
Your comment that James presupposes mind is so contrary to my knowledge of
Radical Empiricism as to assure me that at least one of the two of us is in
left field. The clearly stated and ONLY postulate of Radical Empiricism (in
all my materials) is that EXPERIENTIAL VERIFICATION is the SOLE
pre-supposition. Do you agree with my interpretation, or am I missing
something?
In fact, the main point of James' "Does Consciousness Exist" is to show that
conventional consciousness is a nonentity. Consciousness is subsequently
redefined as the process or experience of thinking. He defines matter and
thoughts as formed from pure experience and the relationships between
experiences. He rarely references "mind" in this paper, so perhaps this is
where we are not seeing eye-to-eye. Is your "mind" term dramatically
different than his term "consciousness"? If so, I still need to know how you
can allege that James would suggest "mind" is the one thing in the universe
that exists prior to experience.
If you are interested in continuing the discussion, could you PRETTY PLEASE
respond to my prior post as well as the above? As for your comment below:
STRUAN:
Yes my 'mind' is a derivation of
experience in the sense that I called it a mind after I experienced, but you
still can't have an
experience without an experiencer. Yes they are inter-dependant. Yes they
arise together and, yes,
“This paper and the seeing of it are two names for one indivisible fact.”
How you can possibly claim
that from this it can be deduced that Quality is primary is beyond me. It
cannot be. Whether
analysed as a relation of ideas or a matter of fact you have absolutely no
stated reason to
postulate this ad hoc hypothesis.
ROGER:
Pure Experience (DQ) is primary in that everything else can be derived from
it. Again, feel free to disagree, but please do acknowledge that it is
logically consistent. Radical Empiricism, mystic philosophy and the MOQ all
agree on this point. Each starts (presupposes) with THE ONE -- an undivided,
monistic, event-based reality -- and then explains the MANY as derived by
divisions or collections of this primary experience. The status of a
distinct or separate "divider" or "collector" is similarly uniformly rejected
as illusory. The divider (your "mind") is itself not an entity, but a
particular collection of the divided experiences. The seer, the seen and
seeing are one.
Conventional Western Dualistic philosophy doesn't exist absent of assumptions
either. It just makes different assumptions. I suggest that the assumptions
of the mytics are less "ad hoc" and more explicit. But I could be wrong....
Please respond!!!!!
Rog
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